


7.03: Winter and Night in Disguise

by idlesuperstar



Series: The Crooked Roads [3]
Category: Spooks | MI-5
Genre: M/M, dubcon (past/implied/ambiguous)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:03:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3639492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlesuperstar/pseuds/idlesuperstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Colleagues. It’s not a small thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	7.03: Winter and Night in Disguise

**Author's Note:**

> Series notes are [here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/136827), and briefly detail the series 9 issue and also my obsession with Lucas/Oleg and also Lucas/William Blake. (In the fanboy sense, not the historical/AU/timetravel sense *files idea away for later*). 
> 
> This is a sidelong look at ep 7:03 from Lucas' brainpan. If you've not seen the ep then it won't make much sense. Go and watch that instead. 
> 
> Title from William Blake's [ _Nurse's Song_](http://www.blakesongsettings.co.uk/index.php/the-poems/108-nurses-song-innocence-and-experience) from _Songs of Experience_. Intertitles are Proverbs of Hell from [ _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_](http://www.bartleby.com/235/253.html).

There’s a nip in the air that has them walking at a fast clip, by unspoken agreement. Lucas has turned his coat collar up but the wind still catches the back of his neck. He forgot to buy a scarf. Getting a coat, jeans, the basics, was disorientating enough. Chip and pin machines. He’d got cash out, in the end. 

He can appreciate for the first time why the aristocracy - and the nobs at Whitehall - go to the same tailor all their lives. There’s a comfort in the continuity. A deliberate shunning of change. 

Guy Burgess in his Moscow exile, ordering a suit from his Savile Row tailor. 

He blinks the thought away. It would be good to have a day that doesn’t have him thinking about Russia and spies. And loyalty.

 

~

 

Marlin is urbane, intelligent. He talks in layers. There’s a strata to contacts, and he is far, far away from the asocial hackers and conspiracy theorists that Lucas has known. He can see why Adam cultivated him. He can’t imagine Adam crowded round a brazier, drinking Special Brew. The thought makes him smile.

Marlin is ostensibly talking about friendship, although he could mean many things.

“Friends are either a nuisance or they’re boring,” Lucas says. He’s only partly testing the waters. 

He tries not to think about how he’s spent the last couple of weeks wondering whether his old friends think he’s dead. 

About whether he could field their questions, bear their disappointment. Even his footie mates, who never really talked about anything serious. The post-game showers, the scrutiny. What cover story could deflect those curious gazes? He thinks fleetingly of Harry’s disgust. And _he_ understood.

He glances at Ros. Despite their differences, and her mistrust, they are in tune.

He will stick to colleagues for now. To the people who understand.

 

* * *

_The busy bee hath no time for sorrow_

 

Jo has papered over the cracks of whatever happened to her. Lucas recognises the signs. He barely knows her, and can’t quite decode what Adam was to her. But he feels a kinship.

What is this team? he thinks, not for the first time. Not quite the walking wounded. The deliberately workaholic. As if it’s the only thing that makes sense. He expected to be the odd one out, but instead he fits right in. Some days he thinks he’s not even the most fucked up one. 

“How’s Ben?” Jo asks. “Does he know the danger he’s in?”

It’s heartening, that she still has genuine concern for him, and that she’s willing to show it. She is less guarded than Ros. 

Mind you, Lubyanka is less guarded than Ros. 

Ben is the least wounded of them all, but he won’t stay that way. He’ll never survive, if he does. But he’s a good agent. 

“We learn by doing,” Lucas says. 

He deliberately does not think about the things he learned at Oleg’s hands.

 

* * *

 

There’s an energy humming beneath his skin today. Everything has slotted into place. Perhaps it’s from having finally shrugged off most of the mistrust and duplicity of Arkady’s chess game. Perhaps it’s the familiar reassurance of knowledge. 

He may still forget to use his Oyster card, but he’s crammed so much information about post-9/11 terrorism into his brain in the last few days that he knows he can hold his own. Better, even.

“Just when we’re sliding back into complacency - " he says.

“ - they step up their game,” Ros finishes. 

Harry nods. Lucas feels the rush of it, of a team working together. It’s heady. It sings through his veins. 

Colleagues. It’s not a small thing.

 

* * *

 

In another life, Lucas might have thought himself a mentor to Ben. He knows he’s more than capable of it. Perhaps he will be again, but now is not the time. 

He has no illusions about himself. He can juggle the poker game of the debriefings and the odd disconcerting moments of the unfamiliar. He can even manage to shut down most of the shudders of memory. In the daylight hours, anyway. With all of this, he can still do a good job. But Ben deserves more than the scraps that are left over. 

“They must not get the slightest idea that we’re watching,” Harry says.

Ben deserves a whole team that will keep him safe. Alive.

 

* * *

 

When Lucas thought of home, of London, all those times he was holding fast to the things that he could, he rarely thought of rainy cold December nights. He pulls his coat more tightly around himself and lets the adrenaline of waiting for Ben keep him warm.  

“I’ll have your back every step of the way,” he says, offering comfort and dismissal in one brief touch. He tries not to think about how he’s barely touched another person for days.

“And after?” Ben asks. He’s concerned about one of the kids. This is what Lucas was afraid of. Was waiting for, almost. He has to shut it down. Ben’s not happy, but he accepts it. All he needs is perspective. Someone outside it, on his side, to straighten him out. 

Lucas watches him go. He wonders if it would have made a difference, if he’d had someone there to straighten _him_ out. 

He doubts it. 

He’s not sure he’ll ever get straightened out. Oleg has scrambled him. All his synapses. They flicker and spark and come up with something untranslatable. He’s a human Enigma machine. And that bastard is the only one with the settings.

 

~

 

He looks up reflexively at the noise of the train, and the rain falls heavy on his face. _Jesus fuck no no no -_

_He’s drowning. Christ, he’s going to die here. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what Sugarhorse is. Please, please, please -_

He stumbles against the wall, forces his head down. He is not there. He is _not_ there. He heaves in great gulps of air, trying to force the nausea down. Concentrate. The brick is cold and rough under his hand. It’s real. He is free, he can move, he is home, safe. 

He can still hear her voice in his head. He braces his hands on his thighs, breathes deliberately. Tries to think of something else. Something - safe. Something that is - _here_. 

_I wander through each charter’d street._ Christ, that’s barely _reassuring_. But still. It’s something to hold fast to.

He stands up, speaking the lines under his breath. He needs to hear them aloud. Matches his paces to the rhythm. 

He goes to see Harry. 

 

* * *

 

Lucas can’t tell if Harry is dissembling or not. He’s still off-balance. He’s not yet regained all his ability to read Harry’s face. 

“It seemed pretty important to the interrogator at the time,” Lucas says, and is mortified to hear the crack in his voice. This is almost as awkward as the horrific conversation they had when he first got back.

“When troubles come - " Harry says, and it’s all Lucas can do not to correct him. No-one likes a smart-arse. Besides, Harry is probably misquoting on purpose.

He thinks again of Guy Burgess, drinking his bleak days away in hollow exile. _But I didn’t betray my country._ The anger flashes through him, sharp and hot. Burgess had it _easy_. 

“I’d hate to think that I went through that - " he begins, and Harry cuts him off. 

Lucas is aware that if he weren’t between Harry and the door, he’d be alone right now. It’s almost funny, how terrified Harry is that Lucas might be getting emotional. Might talk about his _feelings_. 

The one thing Lucas can guarantee is that he will _never_ talk to Harry about his feelings. 

 

* * *

_The Soul of sweet delight, can never be defil’d_

 

He comes awake hazily, reluctantly; cocooned in an overwhelming sense of safety, of comfort. Of being cared for. Held. 

He burrows further down into his pillows, wanting to submerge back into the sweet indolence of his dream.

The covers are full and heavy over his back, his arse, like the welcome weight of a familiar body; he spreads his legs a little further apart and the cotton grazes shiveringly across his balls like fingertips. 

The mattress is firm but yielding under his cock as he moves against it lazily; smooth and warm like the press of flesh. 

The arousal hums slow and easy through him; the sensations falling into the images in his mind, until there is nothing but the delicious drag of fingers on him, of a palm smoothing across his skin, of hot unsteady breath in his ear, of a hand that is not his own sliding beneath him to close around his cock. 

He meant this to be lazy, slow, to luxuriate in it, but the drag of palm against his cock kicks his arousal up, until the blood is thrumming through him, and he is overtaken by urgency. 

The fingers around his cock are fast, tight, knowing. He is so close. The hot heavy press of skin against his back, the brush of a thigh between his, the familiar smell of sweat; Christ, he is so close. 

And then, the low, rough voice murmuring in his ear, _Let go, Lucas, let go. I’ve got you_. 

He comes hard, shuddering a groan out, chest heaving, heart pounding. 

He presses his face into the pillow, reluctantly aware again of where he is, and that he is alone. 

 

~

 

He finds his way unerringly in the dark to the bathroom to clean himself up. The water is warm, the towel is soft. He knows where he is. But the dream lingers, and he can’t help wanting to cling to it.

He pads back to the bedroom, climbs into bed and pulls the duvet close around him, chasing after the last sensations of comfort. 

Over the past few years, he's had every variation of these dreams. 

Dreams where the beatings became fucking, and he would wake up no longer certain which made him hard.

Dreams where he was the one doing the beatings. Oleg desperate under him, begging, voice cracking.  And shifting, imperceptibly, those beatings becoming fucking, too. 

This, though. _This_ is the loveliest, and the most cruel. 

Oleg’s a clever man; and not just when it comes to books. He carried out the beatings with a professional economy, never once becoming sadistic; that would have been easier, somehow. 

No, his genius was in knowing when to stop. In knowing that the sudden cessation of pain was as glorious as an armful of morphine. And that to offer comfort, at those heady moments, was the way to ruin Lucas. 

Lucas burrows further into the bedclothes. He knows all the names for what he’s suffering. It doesn’t stop him feeling Oleg’s absence like a physical ache. 

At these rare moments of peace, he doesn’t even try to fight it.

He wonders if Oleg feels it too, now he is gone.  

 

* * *

The cafe is crowded, lively, a proper greasy spoon, where the tea comes in a mug and the only coffee choice is black or white. It’s perfect for observation, but he can barely hear the conversation Ben and the kid are having. He watches their body language, and it’s obvious that the kid trusts Ben. That’s a good thing. 

He nurses his mug of tea and tries not to kick the feet of the bloke opposite him as he shifts in the plastic seat.

Ben is in the toilet for far too long. That can’t be a good sign. 

He beats the kid to it, searches for whatever Ben’s left. 

_Shit_. 

By the time he’s on the pavement they’re out of sight.

“This is not a dry run,” he tells Ros. This is a fine bloody time for Harry to go AWOL. Not that Ros can’t handle this. They can handle it between them.

He feels the kick of adrenaline again, feels the thrum of connection; partnership, teamwork. 

They will get Ben out of this, they will stop the rest of these naive kids.

 

~

 

The market is crowded, noisy; a week ago it would have been too much to cope with. In one compartment of his brain he realises how much progress he’s made. He is more settled, today.

He deliberately doesn’t think about why he woke up rested, how he felt a sense of ease, of peace, as he made his way across the river. It’s enough that he felt it, that it means he can do a good job today.

The crowds fade from his awareness as he focuses on Ben and the kid, follows at a distance. 

The kid is panicking, and not hiding it. He’s going to go. 

He tells Ros, can hear her co-ordinating with CO19. She’s in her element in a way Lucas would never be. Lucas belongs here on the ground, with the adrenaline zinging through him like it hasn’t since - 

 

He shoves the thought away, focuses on Ben. He has to trust Ben with this. It’s in his hands now. 

 

And then it’s not. It’s a fucking free-for-all and a total shambles. 

Beneath the steady voice Ben is close to losing it. He feels too much, still. 

Lucas has to shut him down again. Give him perspective. He’s a good kid, but good kids don’t survive in this game. 

 

“We’ve been played from the start,” Lucas tells Ros. She finished his thought. Fucking Marlin. With his triple talk and his bespoke tailoring. He should have guessed. Give him the junkies and the hackers any day. There’s a kind of dirty truth to them that’s cleaner than the likes of Marlin. 

They’re down here on the ground getting tainted, like Ben. 

Like him and Oleg. 

 

* *

 

“We all make choices,” Ben says. He sounds calm, like he’s come to terms already. Lucas knows how that goes.

Anything to get people off your back.

If only it were that easy. 

Sometimes it’s the things that you don’t choose that are the hardest to live with. That you don’t _want_ to choose. 

“I know what it’s like,” he tells Ben. He’s only partly talking about being undercover. 

 

* *

_The weak in courage is strong in cunning_

 

Lucas pulls his collar further up. The chill in the air has got worse. It feels like weeks since he and Ros were walking here to meet Marlin. 

After the endless sameness of prison it seems impossible that so much can happen in one day. 

“It’s just one doll inside another,” Marlin says. Is he never to escape from fucking _Russia?_

In the stark moment before Marlin’s blood spatters his face, when for a second he thinks Marlin means to shoot _him_ , Lucas isn’t afraid. He’s fucking _furious_. I didn’t survive eight years to be wiped out by _you_ , he thinks. 

If Oleg couldn’t kill him, then nobody gets to kill him. It’s a promise he’s made himself. 

He is aware that there is so much wrong with that it’s not even funny. He is so far beyond fucked. 

 

* *

“ Yeah,” he says to Ros. “Colleagues are okay.”

It’s the first time he’s seen her blink. He smiles to himself on the way out. Despite the kid, and Marlin, despite the further layers scraped off Jo and Ben, it’s been a good day. They’ve worked well together.

He’s not testing her loyalty to Harry, though it’s good to hear. 

It’s enough that she understands loyalty. 

That she sees what a terrible burden it can be. 

 

* *

 

His fridge looks like a parody of a bachelor’s. It’s ridiculous to feel a pang of loss because of a fridge, but it’s the small things that sideswipe you. 

He meant what he said to Ben, about going for a beer. There are few things sadder than a man on his own in the pub with a lonely pint, but drinking at home just isn’t the same. 

He settles down on the sofa with a can of cheap lager. Bewildered by the fancy labels and endless choice in the supermarket, he’d reverted to his seventeen-year-old self and bought a four pack of Carling. 

He’d always looked older. Benefits of being tall, and gloomy looking. 

Colleagues, he thinks, toasting them only slightly ironically with his awful lager. 

 

* *

 

2.03 am. 

It’s just after six, in Moscow. Lucas wonders if Oleg is lying awake too, unable to sleep. 

If he’s just as restless, sweating in empty sheets. 

He can keep these thoughts at bay in the daylight, but the early hours have always been the same. 

He never even thought, back there, of Oleg’s life outside the cell, outside the gates. If he even had one. 

If he wasn’t, after all, a torture dream. A coping mechanism. 

No. He was real alright. If Lucas was going to dream up someone, it wouldn’t have been Oleg Darshavin. 

It wouldn’t have been Oleg’s heavy warm hand, or his rough, solid weight. 

He hopes Oleg is awake. 

He hopes he’s not the only one suffering from this unholy bond between them. 

 

2.05 am.

Damn you, Oleg Darshavin, he thinks. Damn you to hell. 

_Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, Lucas._  

Oleg’s eyes had flashed with some dark spark when he’d said that. 

Sometimes Lucas isn’t sure if he was pushed or fell willingly. 

 

He glances at the clock again. 2.07 am. 

He deliberately turns his back on it, pulls the covers up and concentrates on breathing deeply.

Concentrates on the distant, comforting sounds of London. 

There are people sleeping soundly right now because of what he did today.

There are colleagues who are no doubt lying awake too because of what they did today. 

There’s a strange solace in that thought.  

Colleagues. Yes. It’s enough. 

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I'd like to say I've been in a Russian prison for six months, which is why the massive gap since last posting. I'd like to, but it would be a lie. :D Stuff got in the way. 
> 
> Again, hearty thanks to [playazindaback](http://playazindaback.tumblr.com) for casting her beady beta eye over this, aaaaaages ago. 
> 
> One thing I love about Spooks is the literary references the characters throw out, like it's a perfectly normal thing to quote Shakespeare in the workplace. (IF. ONLY.) I can't believe that Harry's "When troubles come..." is an unintentional misquote; I figured it was on purpose. It is - as any fule kno - from _Hamlet_ : "When sorrows come they come not single spies, but in battalions". (Way to understate, Claudius). 
> 
> Alan Bennett wrote a couple of plays about Burgess (An Englishman Abroad) and Blunt (A Question of Attribution) - both also filmed and well worth watching - and they were performed together under the title of 'Single Spies'. So it's very pleasing to be able to get (literary) Burgess references into this.
> 
> I decided that Oleg's love of English literature would stretch beyond the Victorian novelists (much as Lucas' does) and so he quotes Lucifer from Milton's _Paradise Lost_ : "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" knowing that as a Blake fanboy, Lucas would totally understand. _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ is, after all, pretty much _Paradise Lost_ fanfic.


End file.
